Posts tagged “islands”

Another one from the vault. This is an image from what used to be my “öffice”. One of my favourite anchorages in the Whitsundays, Stonehaven is tucked up on the NW side of Hook Is. Secure holding,surrounded by lofty hills, close to some of the best snorkelling and diving in the Whitsundays and you get to see some great sunsets like this one!
Hopefully I will be back out there soon!

Christian Fletcher has just posted on his blog about his outrage about the proposed gas plant at James Price Point near Broome and got quite a few responses.
The article on Four Corners was quite illuminating on the lengths that some politicians, mining companies and even members of the aboriginal community will go to to get these projects running, citing the benefit to the community
While there will undoubtedly be economic benefits flow on to the wider community from these projects, if you believe that these projects are started on that principal, then you believe in the tooth fairy!
These projects come about because a bunch of people see an economic benefit for them and their shareholders, in other words, they have access to a resource which can only be used once and they will sell that resource for as much as they can.
The fact that it will employ a lot of people and contractors is probably a necessary evil that is part of the cost of doing business.
After the resource is finished or is no longer economical, what is left is a huge hole in the ground and a landscape that is dramatically altered from it’s original state.
The images below are of two islands, Cockatoo and Koolan, which are situated in Yampi Sd. on the Kimberley Coast.
Not very pretty are they?
These two islands have been mined sporadically for iron-ore for many years and have both been shut down when prices made it unviable to work. In Koolan Is. case they bulldozed much of the equipment into a pit and flooded it.
My question is what will happen to what’s left of these islands at the end of the mine’s life? Theoretically they are supposed to be rehabilitated, but how do you rehabilitate that?
This image is what it would have looked like originally.
These are relatively small mines compared to mines in the Pilbara but if you extrapolate this to include all the infrastructure like towns, camps, railways & port facilities such as Port Headland, Karratha etc, what will happen to all this when the iron/oil/gas runs out?
What will happen to the Plant proposed at James Price Point in the future, will the multinational company that owns it take it ALL away???
Is it worth the price??

These two images also show Gloucester Is. but from the eastern side and early in the morning.
105mm, ISO 100, 1/4s@f8.
The above image was taken from a neat little place called Dingo Beach which is one of a bunch of little bays and beaches situated between Airlie Beach and Bowen.

35mm, ISO100, 1/15s@f8.
Hydeaway Bay is the next bay around and both places have some seriously nice homes being built. Not a bad spot to live or holiday hey?

In response to a query from Graham at Ecomuse Images and with inspiration from truenorthmark, I am going to step back in time to 1989 when I was lucky enough to spend 5 months in Fiji.
I turned up with my surfboard, my backpack and some Nikon camera gear and no idea of where,what ,how. (Get the picture?)
To cut a long story short I kind of went native after being adopted by a local family who had family scattered over the Fiji Islands.
Even though I didn’t get to surf some of the places I was trying to get to, I got to spend time with some of the most generous and warm-hearted people I have yet to meet. I also saw and learned some aspects of Fiji that most tourists never see and got a few images to boot.
These images have been scanned from 35mm Kodachrome Slides so image quality may not be perfect but for 20 yo images they are not bad!
Hope you enjoy the next few posts from the vaults!

As I mentioned in my last post, this landscape looks like it could all falll down with a good sneeze! This is in an image taken at Steep Island that shows how it is all being slowwly whittled away. Some of the rocks that have fallen off the cliff are big! I saw even bigger falls in places, would not want to be underneath them……….
On another note, I have just checked out some images posted by Christian Fletcher and Mark Stothard. Nice! That is the beauty of photography, we all see things differently!

This is a shot of St. Patrick Is. taken just after sunrise. St,George Basin is a large basin that the Prince Regent R. flows into.
The tidal flows in the entrance to this basin have to be seen to be believed, places like Whirpool Reach can have currents of up to 10 knots and will throw large vessels around like toys. In the middle of the mayhem, dolphins are calmly fishing!
This particular morning we were anchored off a place called Python Cliffs, I had a feeling that there could be a photo op which worked out very nicely!